It’s been a long wait, but the Massachusetts lottery is getting ready to move online.
The state lottery commission says its new iLottery program will make its debut sometime this summer.
Christian Teja, the state’s chief iLottery officer, said that even though online lottery sales were approved in 2024, it took nearly two years to responsibly launch the project. The Massachusetts State Lottery Commission has put the project out to bid and chose Aristocrat Interactive, an Israel-based tech firm, as the winning bidder.
“We’ve been working with that bidder ... over the last several months over the course of numerous meetings and workshops to build the system and get it ready to go public,” he said.
While the state’s online lottery has been widely reported to have been expected to go live in April, Teja said other dates that were mentioned were only a “loose projection,” and once the commission had a better understanding of the process, it was more appropriate to wait until summer.
The online option will offer instant-win games and other contests like Powerball and Mega Millions.
States like Virginia, North Carolina and neighbors in New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Connecticut are currently running online lotteries, so Teja said it’s logical for it here in Massachusetts.
“It’s a natural next phase for the Mass. lottery,” Teja said. “The lottery was formed in 1972, and it’s grown to be one of the most successful lotteries, not just in the country, but in the world. And this was a logical next step.”
Teja said that just as with in-person lottery sales, users cannot use a credit card to play. The online program is secure, with users registering for an account, he said. And there is geofencing to ensure that users are within the borders of Massachusetts in order to play.
And while retailers have worried that making lottery tickets available online will hurt their sales, Teja says he’s confident the more than 7,000 retail stores that sell lottery tickets will still thrive even with the online option.
“In states where iLottery has been introduced, there has actually been success — increased success — at the retail level,” Teja said.
Lottery retailers receive a 5% commission on all their sales, and a 1% bonus for prizes cashed or won at their store. Retailers earn an average of $50,000 in profit per retailer per year.
He said the iLottery, like the scratch tickets, will be purely intended as entertainment, with no skill involved.
“All the games that we offer are purely games of chance, so whether it’s retail lottery or the iLottery, there’s no component of skill. The results are predetermined, even though, especially on the iLottery experience, it may look like a game-style play, but no matter what you do, the outcome is predetermined for that particular game.”
The lottery brings in a billion dollars in revenue for the state each year, which is doled out to cities and towns for such things as public safety, school systems and local road improvements.
Proceeds from iLottery will support early childhood education. The commission’s initial projections for the first year of the iLottery is about $70 million in profit, with nearly $180 million projected by year three.
